Opposition to Bush’s Anti-Birth Control Appointee Grows

Share This

Congress Sends Letter to HHS Secretary Calling For Withdrawal of Keroack from Family Planning Post

WASHINGTON, DC—Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) today praised members of the U.S. House of Representatives for supporting birth control access and for urging Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt to reconsider the appointment of anti-birth control, anti-sex education hardliner Eric Keroack to the position of deputy assistant secretary for population affairs (DASPA). The DASPA oversees Title X, the nation's family planning program, which provides family planning and preventive health care services to more than five million low-income individuals annually — helping prevent more than one million unintended pregnancies each year.

“Birth control is basic health care and people who oppose it shouldn’t be in charge of it,” PPFA President Cecile Richards said. “The nationwide groundswell of opposition to the Keroack appointment continues to build. We applaud lawmakers for standing up for women’s health. Our message to the Bush administration is, ‘Fire Keroack now.’”

Until recently, Eric Keroack was the medical director for A Woman’s Concern (AWC), a network of so-called “crisis pregnancy health centers” in the greater Boston area. In addition to their strict anti-choice policies, under Keroack’s supervision, AWC health centers would not even distribute, encourage the use of, or offer referrals for contraceptive drugs and devices.

More than thirty years ago, with strong bipartisan support, Congress created Title X, the nation’s first federal program dedicated to the provision of family planning services. Since then, the Title X program has helped build a network of family planning clinics, established the standards used for the delivery of high-quality, low-cost family planning services, and enabled millions of women to prevent unintended pregnancies, and receive desperately needed reproductive health care.